FinObservatory

Sovereign debt / AZE

Azerbaijan

Latest government debt 20.9% of GDP (2024, Central govt (IMF GDD)). No sovereign-debt crisis in the chronologies.

Full crisis history (banking, currency, sovereign) →

Azerbaijan’s latest debt of 20.9% is below the 80.7% median at which sovereign crises of the 2000+ era began. This is a comparison, not a prediction. A country can default well below these medians (Argentina defaulted in 2001 at 48.0% of GDP) or carry the world’s highest ratio without defaulting (Japan, above 230%). Default risk turns on debt composition, fiscal capacity, credit history and market access, not the level alone.

Official risk classification

Current classification
Category 4 of 7
0 = exempt, 1 = lowest risk, 7 = highest · as of Jun 26, 2026
EffectiveClassification
Jan 28, 2022Category 4 of 7current
Jun 29, 2006Category 5 of 7
Jan 18, 2002Category 6 of 7
Jan 1, 1999Category 7 of 7

The CRC scores the likelihood a country services its external debt on an eight-step scale, from 0 to 7, and sets the minimum premiums the OECD Arrangement participants charge on officially supported export credit. Categories 1 to 7 are the risk ladder (1 lowest, 7 highest). Category 0, and the blank status the OECD has used for these countries since 2013, mark high-income OECD and high-income euro-area economies that are exempt because their credit is priced on market terms. An exempt status is unclassified by design, not a data gap and not a zero-risk rating.

Source: OECD, Country Risk Classifications of the Participants to the Arrangement on Officially Supported Export Credits OECD CRC, free reuse with attribution. Category is an ordinal 0-7 risk step, not a probability; 0 and blank denote exemption. Methodology

Debt trajectory, 1980 onward

Debt to GDP by perimeter, observed years only (no IMF forecast years). Central-government debt is mechanically below general government (it excludes state, local and social-security debt). No sovereign-debt crisis years fall in this window.

Central government (GDD)General government (WEO)Private non-financial (GDD)
020406019922000201020202024PrivateWEO grossCentral

Source: IMF Global Debt Database (Mbaye, Moreno-Badia & Chae, IMF WP/18/111) | IMF World Economic Outlook Debt is % of GDP; crisis-year shading from the sovereign-debt chronologies. Methodology

Debt profile

Latest by perimeter
Central government (IMF GDD)
20.9% (2024)
General gov gross (IMF WEO, April 2026 edition)
21.6% (2024)
Private non-financial (IMF GDD)
30.0% (2024)
History
Peak debt
26.4% (2021)
Sovereign crises
0
Vs 2000+ crisis-start median
-59.9

External debt (World Bank IDS)

External debt owed to non-residents, from the World Bank’s International Debt Statistics, which covers low- and middle-income economies only (Azerbaijan is classified Upper middle income). Dollar figures are current US dollars; ratio figures are percentages, as labelled. This is external debt in USD, a different measure from the government debt-to-GDP ratios above; do not compare the two directly.

$12.20B
External debt stocks, total (DOD, current US$) (2024)
17.0%
External debt stocks (% of GNI) (2024)
$4.18B
Debt service on external debt, total (TDS, current US$) (2024)
11.4%
Total debt service (% of exports of goods, services and primary income) (2024)
1.8%
Short-term debt (% of total external debt) (2024)
39.6%
Multilateral debt (% of total external debt) (2024)
104.1%
Total reserves (% of total external debt) (2024)
YearTotal external debt% of GNIDebt service
2015$13.18B25.7%$1.91B
2016$14.47B40.7%$1.74B
2017$15.30B38.9%$2.21B
2018$16.46B36.7%$2.67B
2019$16.44B35.5%$2.05B
2020$16.38B38.6%$1.84B
2021$15.58B29.0%$2.12B
2022$15.46B21.0%$1.61B
2023$14.99B21.6%$2.20B
2024$12.20B17.0%$4.18B

Source: World Bank International Debt Statistics (IDS) World Bank IDS, CC BY 4.0. Units: current US dollars (.CD series) and percent (.ZS series); repayment-schedule years beyond 2024 excluded. Methodology

Debt in default (BoC-BoE CRAG)

Stock of Azerbaijan’s government debt in default in 2020, from the Bank of Canada–Bank of England Sovereign Default Database, broken down by creditor class. The external total is $360K (current US dollars, excluding domestic arrears, matching the database’s published headline).

Creditor class (2020)Amount in default
Other official creditors$360K
Total external$360K

In default (external) for 6 distinct years between 1994 and 2020. Peak external default stock: $74.8M.

Source: BoC-BoE Sovereign Default Database 2025 (Beers, Ndukwe & Berry, Bank of Canada SAN 2025-24) BoC-BoE Sovereign Default Database, Bank of Canada terms (free use with attribution). Units: current US dollars; total excludes domestic arrears. Methodology

Sovereign-debt crisis history

No sovereign-debt crisis is recorded for Azerbaijan in the five chronologies (banking or currency crises, if any, are on the full crisis page).

Source: Global Macro Database 2026_06 (Müller, Xu, Lehbib & Chen 2025) | Reinhart-Rogoff via HBS BFFS | Laeven & Valencia (2020) Methodology

Restructuring history and creditor losses

No sovereign-debt restructuring on record for Azerbaijan in the Cruces–Trebesch haircut database (1815 to present).

Reading this profile

  • Debt levels mix perimeters. The headline and debt-at-start figures fall back through IMF general government, then central government, then WEO gross debt, then (before 1980) the GMD historical series. Central-government readings understate the general-government ratio.
  • Crisis flags end in 2016 (Reinhart-Rogoff) and 2017 (GMD, Laeven-Valencia), while debt runs to 2024. “Years since last crisis” and the absence of recent crises reflect where the sources stop, not a guarantee of calm.
  • Debt level is a weak predictor of default on its own; see the methodology for the debt-intolerance evidence and the full construction.